As technology continues to evolve, authentic multimedia-based teaching materials are widely used in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms. However, they may lie beyond most language learners' proficiency level. The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of advance organizers in conjunction with the cognitive theory of…

Two experiments investigate whether advance organizers (1) help subjects with good reasoning skills compensate for poor memory or information overload; and (2) compensate for distractions. Findings suggest that the organizer technique does not help compensate for processing deficits related to information overload or distracting study conditions.…

Investigated cognitive assembly processes underlying speech production. Reported results of two experiments demonstrating that when students used an organizing device (an abstract problem-solution sequence) in preparing, practicing, and delivering speeches, they exhibited less silent pausing. (PD)

College undergraduates read stories from one of two directed perspectives or no directed perspective. An idea's significance in terms of the assigned perspective affected both initial learning and recall one week later. Schemata, or conceptual frameworks, were assumed to aid in memory and retrieval. (Author/GDC)

To provide a test of the notion that criterial task knowledge facilitates learning and, consequently, performance in studying, a study examined the effects of an explicit prereading task directive and an explicit postreading criterion on the studying behaviors of 40 college undergraduates. After presentation of a prereading task directive prepared…

Subjects read narratives about a meal at a fine restaurant or a trip to a supermarket. The same 18 items of food, attributed to the same characters, were mentioned in the same order in the two stories. As predicted from current formulations of schema theory, foods from categories determined to be part of most people's restaurant schemata were…

In three immediately succeeding trials, 45 young adults named 50 pictures of objects as rapidly as possible; word retrieval latencies were measured for each item. Before each trial, one experimental group was given information as to the word frequency (WF) level of the items' names. The other experimental group was given information as to the…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 30 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) effects of graphic organizers, textual organization, and reading comprehension level on recall of expository prose; (2) the effect of metaphor on the reading…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 12 titles deal with the following topics: advance organizers; a comparison of the effectiveness and efficiency of behavioral objectives and sample tests; anaphoric nominal substitution and its relationship to reading…